Shadow Tag (6 page)

“Down,” I barked. “On your knees!”

Nick had climbed over the seats and was now covering the taxi cab’s driver, who had stepped out of the Camry, both hands in the air.

Daland dropped to his knees, shouting, “Easy with the guns! I’m unarmed.”

I stepped toward him. “The hard drive. Where is it?”

“What hard drive?”

The taxi driver turned toward me, all panicked and jittery. “He threw something out the window as we turned out of Church.”

Daland lowered his head, then turned toward the taxi driver, his face tight with anger. “They watch everything you do, every website you read, every keystroke you tap in. They know everyone you talk to, everything you buy. They own you. And you’re no one. Imagine what they do with people who matter.”

I held my position as Nick moved to cuff Daland. “Save the rant for your Twitter feed.” I gestured at the taxi driver. “Show me.”

He led as we jogged back toward the junction with Church, our footfalls crunching in the snow.

The radio squawked as I called it in. “Target secure, repeat, target secure. We’ll meet you back at the house. And tell the pizza guy his car is safe.”

The snow was falling heavier now and sticking to the ground with purpose, but it didn’t take long. We found the hard drive, half-buried in the snow, by the base of a fence.

I brushed some snowflakes from my face, enjoying the sharpness of the freezing air as it hit my lungs.

It was good to be done with Daland. It always felt great to close out an assignment successfully. We’d done our part. From here on, the ball was in the DA’s court. Right now, though, that familiar euphoria was tainted by something else, a foreboding about some unfinished business I needed to get back to.

I looked up at the snowflakes, watched them cascade down onto my face which tingled under their gentle, cold stings, and shut my eyes, trying to breathe in the calmness.

The season, I sensed, really wasn’t going to be particularly jolly. And that was when my work phone rang.

I checked the screen. There was no number appearing on it. It was a private caller.

I took the call.

The voice was cavernous and artificially monotone. “Agent Reilly?”

I froze. The caller was using an electronic voice changer.

Never a good sign.

In these situations, my mind instantly goes to Tess, and to the kids. I don’t know why. I don’t usually deal with psychos or serial killers. The cases I normally work on rarely have the kind of personal angle that can spiral into a vendetta against my loved ones or me. But right there and then, I thought of them. And it sent a spasm of worry through me.

I just said, “I’m listening.”

“Are you interested in justice?”

I forced out a small chortle. “It’s really hard to take that question seriously from someone who sounds like he has a Darth Vader fetish.”

The man paused, then said, “I know things, Agent Reilly. Things you need to hear. Things I need you to do something about. Many innocent people have died because of this. The question is, are you ready to put your life on the line to do something about it?”

I didn’t know what to make of this. We get these whackos more frequently than you’d think, but they usually call the Bureau’s switchboard. Special Agents’ cell phone numbers aren’t easy to get hold of.

I said, “That’s kind of my job description. Who are you? How’d you get this number?”

“What I know, what I want to tell you about, goes way back. It involves a lot of people. Powerful people.”

“OK, I’m going to hang up now, cause we’ve hit our quota on scoops about Area 51 and—”

He interrupted me. “What about your father Colin? You hit your quota on that too?”

That got my attention.

I caught my breath as the savage image that had been seared into my mind ever since I was ten came bursting out of the cage I tried to keep it in, the image of my dad in his office at home, slumped at his desk with a gun by his hand and the back of his head blown off.

“What do you know about my dad?”

“The truth. Look, I’m prepared to tell you everything. All the information you need, proof to back it up. I’ve kept a record of it all and I’ll give it to you. But I need to know you’ll make sure it gets out.”

I was seething inside, but I knew how to keep it at bay and stay calm. I was fully aware that I was probably being played, but whoever it was was pressing some pretty nasty buttons inside me. “You didn’t answer my question.”

After a moment, I heard him cough—a weird, jarring sound, when it comes out through a voice box—then he said, “Let’s not play games and let’s not waste each other’s time. I can’t stay on this call much longer. All you need to know is, this is on the level and I need you to hear the truth—about your dad, about the others, about Azorian . . . just meet me.”

I didn’t have much choice. “Where and when?”

“Tomorrow. One o’clock. Times Square. By the Duffy statue. You know where it is, right?”

“Of course.”

“Come alone. I won’t show if I think you’ve got anyone else there. And, Reilly? Keep it quiet. I’m saying this for your own good.”

“Oh?”

“The last person I reached out to—the only person I tried to tell about it—he’s dead. And I’m sure it wasn’t pleasant, not that death ever is, but—burning to death in his own home because of some electrical fire the day after I called him? Give me a break. I told him not to look into it, but some of these guys, it’s just in their blood. They can’t help themselves.”

“Then why not cut the whole charade and come in to Federal Plaza? I can protect you.”

His voice stayed calm. “No. You can’t.”

“You’d be in federal custody. My custody.”

“No. The people I’m talking about—they’re your own people. That’s why I need you to hear it first. Alone. So you can think about what you’re going to do about it before they come after you too.”

I couldn’t help but sense that he was telling the truth. He was scared. Even with the voice box, the fear was palpably there.

“OK,” I said. “I’ll be there.”

“Good. Let’s just both hope you stay alive long enough for it.”

Then the line went dead.

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Read on for a sneak preview of the next Cotton Malone novel

THE 14TH COLONY

Available in hardcover from Minotaur Books on April 5, 2016

ORDER NOW BY CLICKING HERE

Copyright © 2016 by Steve Berry

CHAPTER ONE

LAKE BAIKAL, SIBERIA
FRIDAY, JANUARY 18
3:00 P.M.

Bitter experience had taught Cotton Malone that the middle of nowhere usually signaled trouble.

And today was no exception.

He banked the plane 180 degrees for another peek downward before he landed. The pale orb of a brassy sun hung low to the west. Lake Baikal lay sheathed in winter ice thick enough to drive across. He’d already spotted transport trucks, buses, and passenger cars speeding in all directions atop milky-white fracture lines, their wheel marks defining temporary highways. Other cars sat parked around fishing holes. He recalled from history that in the early 20th century rail lines had been laid across the ice to move supplies east during the Russo-Japanese War.

The lake’s statistics seemed otherworldly. Formed from an ancient rift valley thirty million years old, it reigned as the world’s oldest reservoir and contained one-fifth of the planet’s freshwater. Three hundred rivers fed into it but only one drained out. Nearly four hundred miles long and up to fifty miles wide, its deepest point lay five thousand feet down. Twelve hundred miles of shoreline stretched in every direction and thirty islands dotted its crystalline surface. On maps it was a crescent-shaped arc in southern Siberia, 2,000 miles west from the Pacific and 3,200 miles east of Moscow, part of Russia’s great empty quarter near the Mongolian border. A World Heritage Site. Which likewise gave him pause, as those usually meant trouble, too.

Winter had claimed a tight hold on both water and land. The temperature hovered right at zero, snow lay everywhere, but thankfully none was currently falling. He worked the controls and leveled off at 700 feet. Warm air blasted his feet from the cabin heater. The plane had been supplied by the Russian air force from a small airport outside Irkutsk. Why there was so much Russian–American cooperation he did not know, but Stephanie Nelle had told him to take advantage of it. Usually visas were required for entry into Russia. He’d used fake ones many times in his day as a Magellan Billet agent. Customs could also be a problem. But this time there was no paperwork, nor had any officials impeded his arrival. Instead, he’d flown into the country on a Russian Sukhoi/HAL fighter, a new version with two seats, to an air base north of Irkutsk where twenty-five Tupolev Tu-22M medium-range bombers lined the tarmac. An Ilyushin II-78 tanker had provided refueling along the way. A helicopter had been waiting at the air base, which ferried him south to where the plane waited.

The An-2 came with a single engine, two pairs of wings, an enclosed cockpit, and a rear cabin large enough to hold twelve passengers. Its thin aluminum fuselage constantly shook from a four-blade propeller that bit a choppy path through the frigid air. He knew little about this World War II Soviet work horse, which flew slow and steady with barely any zip to its controls, this one equipped with skis that had allowed him to take off from a snowy field.

He completed the turn and readjusted his course northeast, skirting heavily timbered ground. Large boulders, like the teeth of an animal, protruded in ragged lines down ridges. Along a distant slope sunlight glinted on phalanxes of high-voltage power lines. Beyond the lakeshore, the terrain varied from flat empty earth, punctuated by small wooden houses clustered together, to forests of birch, fir, and larch, finally to snow-topped mountains. He even spotted some old artillery batteries situated along the crest of a rocky ridge. He’d come to examine a cluster of buildings that hugged close to the eastern shore, just north of where the Selenga River ended its long trek from Mongolia. The river’s mouth, choked with sand, formed an impressive delta of channels, islands, and reed beds, all frozen together in an angular disorder.

“What do you see?” Stephanie Nelle asked him through his headset.

The An-2’s communications system was connected through his cell phone so they could talk. His former boss was monitoring things from DC.

“A lot of ice. It’s incredible that something so large can be frozen so solid.”

Deep-blue vapor seemed embedded in the ice. A swirling mist of powdered snow blew across the surface, its diamond-like dust brilliant in the sun. He made another pass and studied the buildings below. He’d been briefed on the locale with satellite images.

Now he had a bird’s-eye view.

“The main house is away from the village, maybe a quarter mile due north,” he said.

“Any activity?”

The village with log houses seemed quiet, only fleecy clouds of smoke curling from chimneys indicating occupancy. The settlement rambled with no focal point, a single black road leading in, then out, outlined by snow. A church comprising yellow and pink plank walls and two onion domes dominated the center. It nestled close to the shore, a pebbly beach separating the houses from the lake. He’d been told that the eastern shore was less visited and less populated. Only about 80,000 people lived in fifty or so communities. The lake’s southern rim had developed into a tourist attraction, popular in summer, but the rest of the shoreline, stretching for hundreds of miles, remained remote.

Which was exactly why the place below existed.

Its occupants called the town Chayaniye, which meant “hope.” Their only desire was to be left alone and the Russian government, for over twenty years, had accommodated them. They were the Red Guard. The last bastion of die-hard communists remaining in the new Russia.

He’d been told that the main house was an old dacha. Every respectable Soviet leader back to Lenin had owned a country place, and those who’d administered the far eastern provinces had been no exception. The one below sat atop a whaleback of rock jutting out into the frozen lake, at the end of a twisting black road among a dense entanglement of trailing pines feathered with snow. And it was no small, wooden garden hut, either. Instead, its ocher façade had been constructed from what appeared to be brick and concrete, rising two stories and topped by a slate roof. Two four-wheeled vehicles were parked off to one side. Smoke curled thick from its chimneys and from one of several wooden outbuildings.

No one was in sight.

He completed his pass and banked west back out over the lake for another tight circle. He loved flying and had a talent for controlling machinery in motion. Shortly, he’d make use of the skis and touch down on the ice five miles south near the town of Babushkin, then taxi to its dock—which, he’d been told, handled no water traffic this time of year. Ground transportation should be waiting there so he could head north for an even closer look
.

He flew over Chayaniye and the dacha one last time, dipping for a final approach toward Babushkin. He knew about the Great Siberian March during the Russian Civil War. Thirty thousand soldiers had retreated across the frozen Baikal, most dying in the process, their bodies locked in the ice until spring when they finally disappeared down into the deep water. This was a cruel and brutal place. What had one writer once said?
Insolent to strangers, vengeful to the unprepared.

And he could believe it.

A flash caught his attention from among the tall pines and larch, whose green branches stood in stark contrast with the white ground beneath them. Something flew from the trees, hurtling toward him, trailing a plume of smoke.

A missile?

“I’ve got problems,” he said. “Somebody is shooting at me.”

An instinctive reaction from years of experience threw him into autopilot. He banked hard right and dove further, losing altitude. The An-2 handled like an eighteen-wheeler, so he banked steeper to increase the dive. The man who’d turned the plane over earlier had warned him about keeping a tight grip on the controls, and he’d been right about that. The yoke bucked like a bull. Every rivet seemed on the verge of vibrating loose. The missile roared past, clipping both left wings. The fuselage shuddered from the impact and he leveled off out of the dive and assessed the damage. Only fabric had covered the lift surfaces, and many of the struts were now exposed and damaged, ragged edges whipping in the airflow.

Stability immediately became an issue.

The plane rocked and he fought to maintain control. He was now headed straight into a stiff north wind, his airspeed less than 50 knots. The danger of stalling became real.

“What’s happening?” Stephanie asked.

The yoke continued to fight to be free, but he held tight and gained altitude. The engine roared like a rumble of motorcycles, the prop digging in, fighting to keep him airborne.

He heard a sputter.

Then a backfire.

He knew what was happening. Too much stress was being applied to the prop, which the engine resisted.

Power to the controls winked in and out.

“I’ve been hit by a surface-to-air missile,” he told Stephanie. “I’m losing control and going down.”

The engine died.

All of the instruments stopped working.

Windows wrapped the cockpit, front and side, the copilot’s seat empty. He searched below and saw only the blue ice of Lake Baikal. The An-2 rapidly changed from a plane to eight thousand pounds of deadweight.

Dread swept through him, along with one thought.

Was this how he would die?

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